The present invention relates to digital scanning systems and methods for scanning multi-sided cards and documents.
The availability of low cost high quality scanners has resulted in scanning of information from physical media in many contexts. A scanner may be used to scan a card or document such as a business card, an identification card, a driver's license, a health insurance card, a passport, and other documents with information and/or graphic content. Many cards and documents have information on two or more sides, but low cost scanners are physically limited to scanning one side of a card or document at a time.
The TWAIN Specification Version 1.9, ratified by the TWAIN Working Group Committee as of Jan. 20, 2000, incorporated herein by reference, provides an application programming interface and protocol between imaging software applications and scanner hardware. See www.twain.org for additional details. Although the TWAIN specification provides a suitable interface between a software application and the scanner device, TWAIN fails to specify how multi-sided cards or documents should be scanned to form a composite image. Also many scanners have a sensor to detect the presence of a card or document, but TWAIN does not describe how to efficiently use the sensor to automate the scanning process.